Clutter

We all have them.

It can be a room, a shed, a drawer, a closet, maybe even a large chunk of our basement. We all have places where we dump stuff that, right now, we don't have time to organize and put away properly. How many of us have a so-called "junk drawer"? And how many of us close the doors to certain rooms of our house when people drop by? And how many of us fear anyone getting a look at our basements?

Well, while we probably have more than one space like this in our house, our spare bedroom no doubt wins the prize for the most disorganized, cluttered, utterly disastrous space in our home. Rarely do we ever have anyone who needs to sleep in there -- even my mother-in-law prefers our couch to the mattress in the spare room -- so it's become this sort of catch-all-don't-have-time-to-get-this-put-in-its-proper-spot area.

That is, until today.

Today we began the process of straightening up this room. A couple of the bigger pieces of furniture we're going to stick in the basement (don't even go there!). And my wife is getting a second hand corner desk that will help us organize much of what is in that room -- namely, all of her scrapbooking stuff.

I really love my mother-in-law, because she really helped me get into that spare room today. We don't have a large house, so sometimes space becomes an issue. But she's quite good at thinking about things in an efficient and organized way in a way that my wife and I are not -- or that we sometimes don't take the time to think about!

And I have to tell you, there's no feeling like getting something accomplished, especially in getting your house straightened up or even a room or, yes, even part of a room.

But we all end up with clutter. We all have junk drawers. Or closets. Or rooms. Not everything that clutters up a room or drawer is necessarily something to be tossed, but it's amazing to me how many things we keep hanging onto on the off chance that someday it might prove useful.

I've heard of some people who are addictive collectors, and how they can barely get around their house because of the stacks of magazines, old newspapers, books, and knick-knacks that they keep buying on the Shopping Channel. Most of us, thank goodness, are not that bad off. We should pray for those we know who are!

Yet even for the rest of us who do not accumulate clutter obsessively, we can never permanently get rid of clutter. No matter how clean we've gotten a room, no matter how proud we are of how neat and tidy we've gotten it, quite often, over time, it ends up back in the same state before our whirlwind of energetic housework. Case in point: this is not the first time we've cleaned the spare bedroom. I can think of at least two other distinct occasions when we've attacked the clutter in there. And we've only been here three years! I guess it often gets ignored for the sake of the rooms that we use more frequently.

Anyway, I guess this is true with us also. We accumulate emotional clutter. We all have hearts that are sometimes in desperate need of a good tidying up -- and no doubt several times over the course of our lives. We just get done straightening up one room, and we turn and see dust bunnies and clutter in another. It seems neverending.

But thankfully much of our own clutter we don't have to deal with on our own. Sometimes even other Christians are quite capable with brooms, mops, and dishrags. Other people can help us with our clutter. And God, it turns out, is the best housecleaner. He not only helps take care of the clutter but also shows us ways of preventing it from accumulating so easily and quickly.